An unusual
story has been circulating since last week of an Akula class
Russian submarine lurking in the Gulf of Mexico for weeks,
evidently undetected by the U.S.

The story is odd not only because such a mission would be unusual
and alarming, but also because of the source — in this case,
veteran national security reporter and former Washington Times
columnist Bill
Gertz via the conservative news website The Washington
Free Beacon, launched in 2012.

While cat and mouse games between Soviet and American sub forces
were fairly commonplace during the Cold War, these types of
missions are very rare now, with the last acknowledged set of
occurrences reported
by the New York Times in 2009.

As part of Russia’s military retrenchment and treaty disarmament
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its total deployed navy
was reduced, along with the geographical projection of its
missions. While the Russian navy under Putin and Medvedev has
undertaken well advertised “symbolic” missions, such as a 2008
visit
by a contingent of its weathered North Sea Fleet to
Venezuela, these have generally not been much more than extremely
visible ways to demonstrate displeasure with U.S. and NATO policy
and/or maintain good relations with its arms customers.

Likewise, when Russia’s air force deploys its ancient
propeller-driven Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” bombers to buzz close to
American airspace, the U.S. deploys fighter jets to intercept.

These strategic bombers are unarmed, though their long range
allows them the opportunity to reach U.S. coastlines, as they
were originally designed to do.

So, then, would Russia be willing to escalate the situation by
sailing an attack sub into the Gulf of Mexico?

According to the Washington Free Beacon, two U.S. officials
confirmed that the Akula’s incursion took place at the same time
that Russia once again trotted out its Tupolevs into restricted
airspace in June and July.

Of course, the movement of submarine fleets -- particularly those
carrying nuclear arsenals -- is a restricted topic in both the
U.S. as well as Russia.

Requests for confirmation of the Beacon’s story from the Navy
were declined, the Pentagon has thus far denied the incursion,
and the Russian Defense Ministry will
not disclose information either way.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Armed
Services Committee, has seized the issue and sent a letter to the
Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations demanding clarification,
stating that the incident “is especially troubling given the
drastic defense cuts sought by President Obama, which include
reductions
in funding for antisubmarine defense systems.”

Likewise, the Beacon’s own story points to the purported incident
as part of the Obama administration’s failure to reset relations
with Russia, along with defense budget cuts which would further
cripple submarine detection efforts.

The Washington Free Beacon is a nonprofit publication funded
by the Center for American Freedom, which was
profiled earlier this year as the conservative counterweight
to the Center for American Progress by Politico’s Ben
Smith.